


Chick Out of the Nest

by HerenorThereNearnorFar



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Acrophobia, Fairchild Family Deep Dive, Gen, Horrible Eldritch Bonding Shenanigans, Psychological Harm To Children, Simon Fairchild: A Cool Grandpa Right Up Until He Drops You Off A Cliff For Laughs, Upbeat Nihlists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22569973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerenorThereNearnorFar/pseuds/HerenorThereNearnorFar
Summary: Statement of a former Fairchild, regarding their unusual childhood and family.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Chick Out of the Nest

My childhood was full of laughter and empty spaces. That’s the best way to describe it, I think. There was joy, and yet it never seemed to come with attachment or the emotional follow through most people expect. Happiness without care for who you were happy with or what you were happy about. It was just endless glee, as if the world were one big joke only my family and their associates understood. I never minded, not until the laughter turned on my little brother. 

It was frightening to see my perfect family become a pack of monsters. I thought I knew them. We were always so close. 

Family vacations were a big thing for us. Almost every weekend my mother, Eloise Fairchild, would bundle me on to a plane with her and I’d sit and color through business meetings held in the penthouses of skyscrapers. Pinnacle Aerospace, the largest of the Fairchild ventures, has satellite offices all around the world, collaborating with local firms. Nairobi, Beijing, Vancouver, Paris. At least twice a year Grandpa Simon would show up out of the blue on school days and whisk me and some chosen friend off on an adventure. If our teachers minded they didn’t say; it was the sort of private school where kids took excused absences to go snowboarding so an old man abducting their pupils for a day at the amusement park.

He’d take us from Boulder to Glenwood Springs, and do you know what? It never seemed to take the full 3 hours. Maybe that’s just old bias contaminating my memory though. I thought he was magic back then, the good sort of supernatural.

The park was always fun. They have a roller coaster there set on the edge of a mountain. The sheer drop and stunning views managed to rustle some terror out of even my jaded little brain. My friends would scream and scream— they were properly scared— and Grandpa Simon (that’s Simon Fairchild, if you want full names) would laugh.

No matter how close I thought we were or how fearless my classmate, the ones I chose to come on those day trips always kept their distance afterwards. They’d stumble home on shaking feet, refuse to make eye contact during class, and steadfastly turn down my future invitations. Not that I minded. I had lots of friends and no time for people scared of rollercoasters.

I’ve never been scared of heights. Of open air, of flying, of falls measured in thousands of miles. I was inoculated against it young. 

Our house was far from the city, where the foothills of the Rockies gave in to winding mountain. My mother, an engineer with... unusual tastes had worked on it herself. It was a sleek, modern build cantilevered out from a sharp sloping hill. Cliff, might be the right word. The topple from the deck certainly would have been enough to kill someone. In a possible violation of local environmental laws, mom had carefully blasted away at the granite beneath the house, leaving nothing but a rocky tumble below. Then she had them build the floor of the living room inside out of glass. 

It wasn’t one transparent sheet, there were thin rods of supporting steel in between, making a latticework of metal and glass. The effect was still impressive, especially for guests. There was something to the uneven shape of the rocks a few yards below, and the way the light played between the windows and far off ground, that made you feel as if you were much higher up than you actually were. I grew up running back and forth across the floor. In time you grow used to the disconcerting sensation that there’s nothing below your feet. 

Our travel helped too. In addition to my trips with mom, and Grandpa Simon, and assorted distant aunts and uncles, there were the school breaks. Summers meant long weeks on luxury cruises, at sky-diving lessons, on the ranch under the impossibly huge sky, or visiting some far-flung locale where, inevitably, my family had business and friends aplenty. My aunt, Harriet Fairchild, took me to the Sahara the winter I was seven, and offered me twenty dollars if I could count all the stars. She laughed and laughed when I finally gave up, and told me I was too young to know how wide the universe really was. We would go scuba diving, me and my mother and whatever relation cared to join us—the Fairchilds are a big family, you see, and all stay in touch even if they aren’t the reunion type. I lost two scuba-diving instructors to the deep of the sea during my first excursion but I learned eventually.

Often I was the only child on these trips. Aunt Eve’s son refused to attend, for reasons I wouldn’t understand until I was grown. Uncle Neil had an endless supply of children and step-children— he lived a carefree life. Most of these cousins only came on one or two family vacations before being discarded again. Some of the non-Fairchild associates scattered around the globe had children, I think. We were never left together long enough to become close. I was doted on but the company of adults, who always seemed to be in on their own private joke, grew tiring, especially as I aged. 

Understandably, I was delighted when my mother announced I was going to have a little brother. His father was a hiker, I think, who must not have stuck around. Not that it mattered, as far as I was concerned this baby was a present for me. I was fourteen then, just starting to branch out into my own ventures, just beginning to rebel at the life of idyllic adventure where no faces stayed the same. I had a blog full of vacation pictures that was doing quite well in certain lifestyle corners, a handful of friends who I’d never introduced to Grandpa Simon and who, subsequently, had never left me, and now I was being given a brother. Finally, someone who would stay as the rest of my family whirled in their separate spheres of whimsy. 

Trench was dull for the first few years, too small to climb mountains or jump out of airplanes with. I cherished him nonetheless. I’d steal him away from his au pair and blow kisses into his chubby baby belly until he dissolved into laughter. I’d laugh too. When mom was home she’d come downstairs and join in, not caring what the fun was, just wanting to be a part of it. I really didn’t notice anything about him in those years when I was home. Did he cry a bit too loud when we settled into our first-class plane seats? Did he flinch away from the floor-to-ceiling windows of whatever high-rise office we were in that week? I honestly can’t remember. I do know that back then mom looked at him with nothing in her eyes but fondness. There wasn’t the... the hunger. That came later. 

I went away to college. My family visited me on campus whenever they could, bringing adventures. I kept up my blog, and, on a whim, made it into more of a business. Promoted posts, sponsored reviews of rock climbing equipment. It felt nice to be earning my own money, or at least independently making money off my family. Mom sent me on a few little errands— help a friend learn to skydive, run some of her papers to a contact in New York. They were just finishing up the Daedalus project, and there was a lot of work to be done all over the globe. My family had friends in the strangest places— places I was beginning to realize didn’t quite fit with the world as other people saw it. As a child I hadn’t flinched to at homes hidden in the clouds or people who moved like mist. Now...

At nineteen I was just learning that roller coasters had safety restraints. My college friends assured me that this was not a new development in amusement park technology. 

I wasn’t afraid, was the problem. I knew when I fell for what seemed like hours, that this wasn’t how skydiving worked. I just couldn’t muster up any fear, or any concern. The sky had always been too big for me, and the world had always been full of people who floated just a few inches off the ground. 

When I came home and told her the story, Mom seemed a bit disappointed by my lack of reaction. She never stayed sad about anything for long though. She just tucked my hair behind my ear and said, “It doesn’t matter, in the fullness of time, what you are or who you choose to be,” and I felt reassured. Less reassured when she refused to answer my questions, but that was how it was with mom sometimes. You couldn’t expect too much or you’d get disappointed.

It was on that visit home that I noticed Trench was avoiding the living room. 

He was at that age where he was starting to get a personality; a real one with preferences and strongly held beliefs. Now he could explain the many health benefits of mac’n’cheese, he could cajole and joke and scare himself silly with stories of monsters under his bed. And he was skirting around the edges of the glass floor like he was afraid. When I brought this up with mom, she laughed and whispered, “Watch this.”

Then she took his favorite book and placed it in the center of the falling floor. Trench looked at her, betrayed and yet not-surprised, like she’d done this a dozen times before. Silently he went got two pillows from the couch and, bit by bit, covering his eyes, made a bridge for himself. I watched, alarmed and still uncomprehending. Mom was quicker. When he reached his book she sprung after him and, giggling, grabbed one of the two pillows. 

That was when Trench looked down. I could see the fear in his eyes, the building tears of betrayal, and the exhaustion of repetition. They’d played this game before, so many times that now he didn’t even bother to call out to our mother for help. 

I’d had enough. I marched over and offered out my arms. He leaped into them with only a moment of hesitation, and I carried him back across the glass floor and to solid ground. Mom just laughed. 

I should have known then that something was terribly wrong. I should have realized, I should have stayed. Instead I went back to school and left my brother with our family, which wasn’t a family at all. 

I did make an effort to keep an eye on Trench. It was hard given the distance between us but I got him a phone and showed him how to text. I tried to impress on his latest au pair how important it was that he be sheltered from heights. I gave mom a stern talking to that waved off. “A little fear never hurt anyone, Skye,” she said. “He’ll be fine.” The gleam in her eyes said something different. 

The next time I saw that same dread appetite was during a family event at the Grand Canyon. Business-family, really. Pinnacle Aerospace had signed a deal with yet another airline company and there was to be a celebration of about 70 company insiders. Most of the Fairchilds who worked with the company and a few who didn’t were there, along with lots of proud executives and tired scientists. I’d been asked to do the photography, even though my specialty was travel and not corporate shindigs. I accepted with only a little trepidation. I was trying to get money together to really make my blog independent from my family’s good fortunes and that meant taking less than comfortable jobs. 

Trench was there, with mom, and as soon as he saw me he abandoned her to follow me around. He must have been... seven then. I knew he was still scared of heights, he avoided family trips and had screamed himself hoarse the first time Aunt Harriet had tried to bully him into skydiving, but the two of us had largely been good at keeping him away from sharp precipices. He was a far more sheltered child than I’d been, deprived of the trips that had defined my childhood, but he was safe and largely happy. Afraid, but not so much it ruined his life.

I got most of the requisite shots of milling VIPs, snapped a few pictures of the current CEO grinning with a large plaque meant to represent the contract, and documented the table settings as best I could. Finally I had to give in and wander to the cliffside to get a few pictures of the view. When I explained this to Trench he agreed to hang back. He wasn’t eager to confront the cliff. 

The first few shots seemed excellent-- dark stone backlit by the setting sun, the endless canyon below half-cast in shadow. I wandered down the length of the rim, dodging drinkers and taking photos.   
  
We were at Shoshone Point, a small event site on the South Rim. There’s one great rock outcropping that makes the center point of the site. Different people had been standing there all evening, admiring the view and, in the case of Uncle Neil, testing how far he could clamber down the sheer rock in a business suit. The handful of gathered silhouettes up there didn’t concern me, not until I heard the scream. 

It was a child’s scream. There was only one child at the party. I ran and as the dusk haze cleared I could make out Grandpa Simon and Aunt Harriet, each holding one of my brother’s arms as they let him dangle over the side of the the precipice. The fall wasn’t straight down into the Canyon, there were rocks in the way about a fourth of the way down. It was the rocks I was worried about. 

I’d never been scared of falling before. Maybe I’m still not, maybe I was just scared that they’d do something unforgivable. That I’d never have a family again.

I made it to the side of the drop and lunged forward, trying to catch my brother’s jacket, his arm. A few feet to the left or right and I would have fallen, a misplaced step and I would have toppled forward and taken him down with me. Instead I managed to keep my footing and wrap my arms around his torso. I knelt like that for a second, hearing my little brother cry and Simon, who wasn’t my grandfather but had always acted like it, laugh and laugh. 

“Help me pull him back up,” I ordered once I’d caught my breath. Harriet and Simon complied. They were never malicious, really, and I don’t think they meant to hurt him. At least not physically. They just sensed weakness, and being what they were, couldn’t help but pounce. Trench sat in my lap the rest of the night, refusing to even look at the emptiness of the canyon to our left. Mike, the new guy, brought us a slice of cake. There was such pity in his eyes. 

Do you know that when I was younger Simon Fairchild died? I saw a little bulletin one day in the Los Angeles offices when I was on a visit with my mother. “Chair of the Board Mr. Simon Fairchild has passed away, to be succeeded by his son, Mr. Simon Fairchild.” Panicked, I asked my mom if Grandpa Simon was dead and she just chuckled and told me not to be silly. I saw him a few weeks later, the same Simon I’d always known, as old and wizened as ever but unchanged. As I grew I decided it must have been some advanced form of tax evasion, understandable only to the very rich. Pretend to die, pretend to be replaced by your non-existent son, somehow profit. Now I know that I will never understand what forces powered the people I loved. 

There was nothing for it. I had to get Trench out. They would kill him one day, by accident or simply out of boredom. Even worse, they might succeed in turning him in to something like them. I’d been raised in too much mystery to accord it strong emotions, and thus it didn’t seem to touch me. Not being much for dynasties of blood, my family hadn’t cared. But Trench had a very different disposition. It could worm its way in to him. 

So I took him. It shouldn’t have been that easy. There should have been police and judges. Instead it seemed no one cared. Our mother still called from time to time and sent us invitations for trips to Nepal and Australia. Aunt Eve mailed a handful of birthday cards before seemingly getting distracted. Grandpa Simon still wired me the same exorbitant present every New Years. The fact that I stole Trench from our home in the night just didn’t seem to matter. 

I really wasn’t able to care for a child, much less one with a fear of airplanes, mountains, the ocean, and the dark. My job required constant travel, to increasingly distant locales. Travel blogging for a living became harder when you cut yourself off from family funding, Instagram moved on to new favorites quickly. 

It was Dakota who helped most. Our cousin who wasn’t a cousin at all, who had stopped coming to family events when I still young enough to think that the all-encompassing blue was a normal, intermittent part of life. Aunt Eve’s son. He was the one who ended up taking Trench in, giving him a home that rested on solid ground. I might not be a Fairchild anymore but I do still believe that family can be who you choose. I’d choose Dakota, his husband, my brother. 

Last year I officially changed my name to the pseudonym I’d used since highschool. Summer Fairisle. Still whimsical but a bit separated from Skye Fairchild, a name that was just another joke. It’s a bit safer, perhaps. 

Of course there isn’t any real safety when they’re still out there. The people who don’t care; whose laughter is empty and who feast on what is real. I still don’t know how many of them there might be out there. A lot, I think. My childhood is dotted with uncaring faces and strange figures. 

Maybe that’s why I came here, to tell this story. I’ve been spending more time in cities lately as I travel and London is a favorite. My family used to take me here when I was young and I remember them pointing out this building as we passed it. Their words were meaningless, but there was a significance to their motions, to the jokes I never understood. I don’t know if I’d like to understand. But if this is a place where you keep tales of fear, I’ll add mine to the pile. 

Someone ought to know what it means to grow up with creatures that think good humor and an agreeable nature is a replacement for kindness, or solidity, or warmth. I don’t know what the Fairchilds are but they’re not safe for anyone to be around. Looking back... there were so many deaths. So many frightened faces.

I don’t know what my brother dreams about, but I know he still wakes up screaming. Personally, I find myself haunted by their laughter, and the precipice, and the floor that was my family falling away. I wake up knowing how little I ever mattered. And even though it’s silly, I find myself missing my mother. 


End file.
